UPDATE: According to Mark Miller with PPL, the cause of the widespread outage on Saturday was due to an “equipment failure due to a tree falling on a wire.”
Original article below …
More than 14,000 homes across Schuylkill County lost electricity on Saturday afternoon in an outage that PPL Electric still hasn’t explained.
The power outage lasted for just a few minutes for many of those affected by the outage. However, according to social media conversations, power being restored didn’t resolve all the issues.
Even hours after the first outage, many people still reported their lights “flickering” in Schuylkill County.
Widespread Power Outage in Schuylkill County, Lights Flickering for Many Hours Later
It was around 1:30 p.m. Saturday (Feb. 6), that the lights went out for many PPL Electric customers in Schuylkill County. And according to the utility’s Outage Map, the power loss affected ONLY Schuylkill County.
Here at The Canary, the electricity was out for about 5 minutes before coming back online.
According to Tracie Witter, Regional Affairs Director at PPL Electric, the main outage happened at 1:26 p.m. Witter tells The Canary that about 14,000 homes in Schuylkill County, alone, briefly lost power.
She said that about 9,500 homes had power restored in 5 minutes. For the rest of the local PPL customers, power was back on at 1:42 p.m.
Witter said, at about 4 p.m., “crew and engineers are on site determining the cause” of the outage. However, she did not specify what site, exactly.
We did not hear back from Witter the rest of the day Saturday.
But we did experience what many others did even after power was restored, the lights flickered.
At about 6:30 p.m., Coalspeaker.com asked its readers on Facebook if they’d experienced anything similar on Saturday after the lights got turned back on. Many readers, from across Schuylkill County, reported the same.
“Ringtown flickering, too,” one reader told Coalspeaker.
Another person responded, saying “Cressona flickering.”
Check out where others reported their lights flickering on Saturday:
https://www.facebook.com/CoalSpeaker/posts/3672077782911341?__cft__[0]=AZUfufEBQh0GlPS8TrjmJXXz67ofx7tNlmwa_oASenPpRvWRa2vARrQ8HN1f0mX0OMG3kS3H8Be-TykTgEgi7wddtuEfv1V7bp-fWIOZF4vE2vDB1Yve6w2LDlHtRZX041s5yeqjYUsdM_jjQ7jCmiYi&__tn__=%2CO%2CP-R
We’ll be following up with PPL Electric on Sunday and Monday to see if a cause for the outage has been determined.
Subscribe to Coal Region Canary
Get email updates from Coal Region Canary by becoming a subscriber today. Just enter your email address below to get started!Support Coal Region Canary
Like our reporting and want to support truly local news in Schuylkill County? Your small donations help. For as little as $5, your contribution will allow us to cover more news that directly affects you. Consider donating today by hitting the big yellow button below ...